Tuesday, 28 April 2015

Ashworth, Richard - Trooper

(No soldier photo available)

40th Bn.

Royal Tank Regiment

Died 20th Sept 1943

Age 37

Trooper Richard Ashworth served with the 40th Battalion throughout the heavy fighting in the Western Desert from July 1942 in Egypt and the Battle of Alamein in October 1942, through to the Tunisian campaign which ended with the surrender of the German and Italian forces there in May 1943. When the Battalion went to Italy in August 1943 Richard was a patient in No.24 (U.S.) General Hospital, near Massicault, Tunisia. He subsequently died there of Ulcerative Colitis and Acute Peritonitis.

Richard was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Ashworth and the husband of Annie. He was aged 37. When war was declared in September 1939, Richard was serving with the King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment). He was transferred to the 40th Battalion, Royal Tank Regiment, on 1st November 1941.

Richard lies in Massicault War Cemetery, Tunisia. Many of those buried there died in the battles leading up to the final drive towards Tunis in April 1943, and in that advance at the beginning of May. The capture of Tunis brought the war in North Africa to an end. The cemetery contains 1,576 Commonwealth burials, 130 of which are unidentified. Richard is in Plot 6, Row J. Grave 12.

This is a very special blog, which hopefully is a comprehensive, and permanent record of all our past brave soldiers from Haslingden and Helmshore who lost their lives in either World War One or World War Two.

The research and compilation has been carried out by Jacqueline Ramsbottom of Haslingden Roots in conjunction with Bryan Yorke of Haslingden Old and New who has been responsible for the typing from newspaper transcript of WW1 soldiers and the site construction and day to day administration of the site etc.

If you have information or photos you would like added to the blog then contact Jackie at: Jax1956@googlemail.com

Or if you have any queries with regards to text errors, or site construction etc., then please contact Bryan at: bryan.yorke@sky.com

We are indebted to the late William Turner who did so much research on these brave soldiers and we are so grateful that his previous work has been allowed to be incorporated within this more recent work.

Also we would like to thank Jennifer Shilliday for kindly allowing us to use her superb photo of the Haslingden Memorial for our main header and also as a sub header on most of the soldiers individual reports.

We also wish to acknowledge that the Census Certificates printed below each soldier are "Crown Copyright".

We also thank and acknowledge the photos and inscriptions of the war memorials which wherever possible have been included at the end of each soldier's blog, and some of these photos are copyrighted to the "Commonwealth War Graves Commission". (We are hoping to add these photos in due course)

A lot of the research which has included Notes and also Memorials has been gained from transcripts or notices taken from the original Haslingden Guardian newspaper from that period.

My apologies for typo errors which will have occurred throughout the listings and are being corrected when found during regular audits.

You can just simply scroll down the main blog page on the right hand side and every now and again you will need to click on where it says "older post" or you can shortcut direct to the soldier by clicking over the soldiers name above to bring up their individual page

for the following click over the name and then scroll down until you reached the subject of your choice